Bewilderment

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THE RIDE DOWN MADE HIM RESTLESS. His smallest thoughts now required endless reassurance. He couldn’t stop asking about the past. Through most of Illinois and all through Indiana and Kentucky, he talked about Aly. He wanted to know where she grew up and what she studied in school. He asked how we met and how long it took us to get married and about all the places we visited before he came along. He wanted to know everything we’d done together on our honeymoon in the Smokies, and what Alyssa had liked best about those mountains.

When he wasn’t grilling me, he was studying an Appalachian wildflowers book I’d gotten him, indexed by color and organized by the time of blooming. What’s a “spring ephemeral”?

I corrected his pronunciation and told him.

Why do they go so fast?

“Because they’re down in the shade on the forest floor. They have to germinate and bud and bloom and fruit and set their seed before the trees leaf out and it’s game over.”

What was Mom’s favorite spring wildflower?

I must have known once. “I can’t remember.”

What was her favorite tree? You can’t remember her favorite tree?

I willed him to stop asking, before I forgot the little I’d ever known.

“I can tell you her favorite bird.”

He started shouting at me. It was a long trip.